Headsup: if you haven’t voted for panel topics for South by Southwest yet they close the voting at 5pm today. I’ve put one together on the topic of how to grow successful online and offline communities (and as usual I’m merely the guy who gets the other villagers to come out and make stone soup). This panel has the co-founder of Reddit Steve Huffman, the community manager for Cambrian House Sarah Blue, the community manager for Vencorps Will Pate and the author of OKdork Noah Kagan. .

How would you like to hear from a guy who became the first Y Combinator success story after being initially rejected? He wrote the code for what became one of the most vibrant peer-rated news sites on the planet and then decided to open source his technology. Hear about the design decisions and philosophy that allowed them to create a massive online community that was popular enough to be acquired by Conde Nast.

What about hearing stories from one of the main people responsible for cultivating the community within the online community Cambrian House? With their philosophy of “intense candor” they relentlessly videotaped and exposed internal meetings with their community, shared conference calls, developed a voting system that made members feel relevant and held weekly “Idea Warz” contests to build one of the most loyal online communities (granted they are no longer in existence but that story in itself of their rise and fall should be an incredible one to hear from someone who was there from day one).

Or how about chatting with the community manager who has taken in the refugees from the defunct CH project and given them a new home in the VenCorps community? They’re trying to reshape the funding process by using “wisdom of the crowds” techniques to float the cream of the crop ideas to the top and give them seed funding.

And what about trading insights with blog author who has built a readership of thousands and consistently draws dozens of comments on each post. Learn how a humble writing style can and self-deprecating jokes can create a “Geneva” of neutrality that welcomes in readers and makes them writers.

If these sound like panelists you want to meet then…

Vote Now!

It takes all of 30 sec. And while you’re at it vote for these other Arizona SXSW candidates who have interesting talks of their own.

We had a unicorn last year. You can bet we’ve got something bigger than candy mountain this year.
But we need your help to make it happen so vote.